


The Last Ship Departs

by astarryvintage



Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: Does it count as pining if it's all subtext?, Does it count as subtext if it's all unspoken and Asher is rude?, Game: Destiny 2: Beyond Light DLC, Goodbyes, M/M, Sure it does!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-29
Updated: 2020-11-29
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:08:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27772762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astarryvintage/pseuds/astarryvintage
Summary: Pyramid ships loom overhead. Asher Mir prepares for a final venture within the Pyramidion and is interrupted by a guardian, who seeks one last moment in his company.
Relationships: Male Guardian/Asher Mir
Comments: 2
Kudos: 9





	The Last Ship Departs

**Author's Note:**

> This is a brief scene that takes place right before the Beyond Light DLC/before Io is taken by darkness, as viewed by two people who have a lot of feelings and refuse to talk about any of them. Enjoy!

Asher Mir grazed his fingers against the thin holographic screen, deft as he was urgent. Urgency was nothing new, granted, a constant call from the depths of his chest that pounded through his blood since that fateful day of loss. Though perhaps a call from the depths of his arm was more appropriate. It had given him comfort, once. To think of it as something apart from himself. And yet, as the years went by…

“You are certainly no hunter,” he said aloud, not bothering to look at the figure behind him. “A stroke of luck for you, I suppose.”

The Young Wolf settled in on a rock. One leg drawn up, an arm wrapped across his knee. Infuriatingly familiar. At least his helmet was still on. Asher wasn’t positive he could handle that knowing, yellow glow staring back at him. 

“Wasn’t hiding.” The low echo of Mal-3’s voice was blunt as ever. “Thought you looked busy.”

“Astute observation.” Asher closed a map with the pinch of a finger. “I’m always busy.”

He scrolled through diagrams. A Vex arm. A Vex core. A sketch, crudely drawn, of a lake he remembered so sharply and yet not at all, in a place that, if the guardian sitting behind him was to be believed, couldn’t logically exist. Asher paused there, for a moment. It was easier to pretend not to hear it. Easier to ask that loud, boisterous mess of a fireteam to go and check again. And again.

How many times had it been? A dozen? A hundred? Asher scrolled further. Perhaps he ought to say something, then. Something at least adjacent to gratitude. But words were so fickle.

“I don’t suppose you came just to hover over my shoulder,” he finally grumbled, tapping a button with his knuckle and turning around. “Out with it.”

Mal-3 hesitated. He’d always been more prone to think before speaking, though sometimes it was infuriating waiting for the sentence to solidify in his head. “I think I might’ve,” he said simply, after a moment. “Come to do that. Actually.”

Asher’s eyebrows drew together tightly. “Then be off. I can’t hear my own thoughts.”

“I…”

The guardian shifted. Asher tried to ignore it, but failed—there was too much on his mind. Mal-3 knotted his fingers together, as if trying to untangle the words, process them piece by piece. “You could tell me about your research?” A pause. Uncomfortable. “While I stay?”

Asher was not one for reading people, and he certainly didn’t plan to start now, but the thin hand of knowing just enough grabbed his instincts uncomfortably. He glanced past the guardian, through the rocky crevasse, and up, past the cliffside and to the giant pyramid ship on the horizon. 

That bloody bastard of a machine. But it had been fascinating to shoot at, nonetheless.

“You wouldn’t understand any of it,” he snapped instead, waving him off with his good hand. He had, perhaps foolishly, thought a goodbye was something he would be allowed to forget and regret, and it didn’t sit well with him to be confronted with one now. “Ask Ikorra to catch you up, if she’s ever bothered to read any of my papers. Perhaps you’re enough of a warlock to comprehend eventually.”

“I could read some of them myself now, then,” Mal-3 replied, and it wasn’t about the data, not really. For the first time Asher considered that perhaps the exo did not like goodbyes, either.

His ghost clicked and whirred. The Scribe stood there for a while. He hoped it looked like he’d brushed it off like the foolish request it was, but given that the guardian hadn’t moved… how much simpler it would have been without him.

Asher Mir scoffed, and then grumbled, and then took a few minutes ignoring his company to scroll furiously through his newer files. He would, any other time, have settled into the comfortable shell of a firm ‘No.’ But this was, unfortunately, now. 

“Here,” he huffed, throwing the man a thin, electronic tablet much harder than he should. “This should be simple enough for you. And,” he pointed aggressively upwards, “you must sit quietly!”

Mal-3 pulled both legs onto the rock, pushing his black-and-gold robe out of the way to cross them with a simple, relieved nod. The floating orb of his Ghost tucked into his shoulder. It was a shock Asher hadn’t noticed it earlier. The thing rarely kept its mouth shut.

“Thank you.” It sounded genuine. It made Asher flinch. 

“Well, if you must spend a final day on Io, it might as well be learning something.” He skimmed over as sharply as possible. “Though it stuns me that you don’t find it better spent making a racket with the cabal.”

“No,” Mal-3 replied. He looked down, tablet tucked in his lap. “This is better.” 

One screen beeped. Asher pressed something accidentally, an abhorrent mistake by his standards, and he hovered a pale, blue hand over it. Curse how hard it suddenly was to think. The lockbox of his emotions was weaker as of late. But the silence carried on, blessedly, and while Asher could not shake his awareness of someone behind him, he found himself accepting this more easily than he’d admit. A soft, useless voice wondered if it was really so bad, having company in these final days.

The hum of the tech around him pulled him deep into his documents, and before he knew it, maps of the Pyramidion and Vex security had sucked away the hours. He mumbled to himself, as he always did, and snapped his fingers when a word escaped him, except now a familiar low voice occasionally spoke to fill in the blanks as gently as he could. It didn’t occur to Asher to scold him--it was, in the end, an acceptable noise. It helped him think. He refused to say as much, but the peace was enough. 

Mal-3 begin to stand, and Asher’s head jerked up, finally noticing the darkened sky.

“Thank you,” the exo said again, holding the tablet out. Asher just looked at it, one foot still in his future plans. “It was helpful to me.”

Asher laughed. It was quick, almost a scoff, but he put his hand up and waved him off. “Take the blasted thing with you. I have newer technology and better things to use my time.”

Mal-3 paused. He slowly pulled his arms close, holding it to his chest. “I’ll… It will be safe.”

“I should hope! Simple or not, you won’t find anything like my research anywhere within the vanguard. Though I hardly doubt even you would consider that a surprise, after it all.” Asher turned away, straightening his back. It hurt to do, just a little. He returned to his slouch. “Well, then. If that’s all you’re here for, I suppose this is where you leave me be.”

Nothing. And then a shift, a resigned turn behind him that he suddenly wasn’t ready to hear. “As you ask. I… Be well, Asher Mir.”

Asher stayed silent. His eyes gaze drifted, turning towards his Ghost, stopping to meet her unblinking red eye. The guilt. Long-standing. Always there.

“Guardian,” he said, cursing himself, and the footsteps stopped. He tried to quickly process what to say, what he’d thought, and found himself unable to free the sentiment from where he’d locked it under layers of stubborn aggression. Words. Fickle indeed.

“I told Ikora,” he managed instead, “that you were not the worst assistant I’ve had. You should know,” his eyes stayed locked on his screens stiffly, “you have yet to prove me a fool for it.”

He forced himself not to wonder what expression Mal-3 had, for such things were beyond him now. Instead, he simply began to read the same notes again, and again, and again.

“I hope you find your lake.” 

The Scribe said nothing. For a moment he thought he felt a pressure, a touch against the top of his shoulder, but he convinced himself otherwise. He only dared glance back when the silence dragged on, and the rocks were empty, nothingness expanding up into the dark and foreboding sky.

Had it felt so lonely before?

“Well,” he mumbled, after a moment. The edge was gone in his voice. He, unfortunately, sounded as tired as he felt. He supposed that was better than all the other things. “I suppose this is it, then.”

His ghost rotated slowly, silent.

“Yes,” he answered himself under his breath, slowly closing an image of the Pyramidon. The machine powered down for one brief, final time. “I suppose it is.”


End file.
